America will be voting today. And for many of us, the voting will be hard. It’s been a difficult path to get us here. We’ve all been a little beat up by it. So I thought I’d offer a little healing balm for our souls, especially for today.

I call it “Remember Love.”

It’s simple. Start the music. Then read the meditation below. Slow down. Take your time. I suggest you read it aloud.

“If we have no peace, it is because we have forgotten that we belong to each other.” ~ Mother Teresa

I want to talk with you for a minute about the United States as a Relationship System.

When I say “Relationship System,” I mean something that’s in some ways quite similar to the nervous system in your body. For example, imagine you’re running a marathon. You’re determined to beat a certain time you’ve set in your head, and you’ve been training your body for months to achieve that goal. But on the day of the race, at about mile 14, your right heel begins to scream in pain. Now nothing else in your body is hurting, at least not yet. The vast majority of your body is signaling All Systems Go, except for this annoying heel, which is screaming at you that something isn’t right. So what do you do? How do you respond to that signal in your heel?

This is similar to how a Relationship System works.A Relationship System is a web of people who are linked together via a network of relationships. Such a system can be as small as two individuals (such a married couple) or as large as the entire population of the world. At whatever level you parse it out, however, every relationship system tends to function a bit like a living organism, like the body of the athlete running the marathon. No one part of the system has a complete picture of the Current Reality. Rather, each part of the system provides vital (but partial) information back to the whole, and the “whole” must collectively decide how to proceed based on that information.

Right now in our nation, we’ve all begun to recognize that there’s been a significant breakdown in this information loop within our National Relationship System. A large segment of the nation perceives the current reality in our country in a radically different way from another large segment of the nation. We’re all looking at the same picture, but perceiving very different realities. It’s like we’re the marathon runner, but the signal pathways between the major parts of our body have been cut off. Part of us is feeling one way, another part is feeling very differently. But the connection between the two has been severed, so neither part understands what the other part is experiencing. Thus the whole body suffers.

Now, I have some very good news about all this. In Relationship Systems Theory, which is a big part of the work I do every day, there is a simple solution to this system-wide breakdown. It’s so simple, in fact, it almost sounds too simplistic to be true. But my experience, and more importantly loads of research, have demonstrated that it works, time and again.

This week I’m happy to welcome my friend Suzann Moller to the blog. Suzann is the founder of Beirut & Beyond, a faith-based organization focused on bringing relief, reconciliation and relationship to Palestinian refugees across the Middle East. Suzann has worked with vulnerable populations around the world, including Africa, Europe, Thailand, the Middle East and the US. She has served people living with AIDs, the homeless, refugees, orphans and others marginalized by society. Her passion as a Christian is to be with those the world overlooks and to extend love, peace, mercy and justice to those very people in impossible situations. She’s one of my heroes, and is currently in need of more people like me to join her team. I hope you’ll consider becoming one of them.

I was lying in the bed the other night – OK, 3AM to be precise – with my mind racing. I was trying to put together a plan while I waited for bad news or not as bad news. I thought of an incredible blog post (I do my best creative thinking in the middle of the night) only to wake up a few hours later with the realization that what I thought was so brilliant was utter nonsense. My mind was just too cluttered.

The next day at the gym while on the cross-trainer, I found myself coming up with Plan A, then Plan B, then Plan C. All in sequence: if this happens, then this new plan needs to happen; if that doesn’t happen, then this needs to happen. Can you sense my inner chaos? All because I was stuck in an “unknown situation.” Not having certainty, not having a plan, being in limbo, is the absolute worst for me.

Earlier that week, I was told I need surgery, probably sooner rather than later. That in itself is bad news. I had plans to go back the Middle East this fall, not only for my work plans, but because that beautiful, chaotic, complicated place is where my soul flourishes. When I am there, I feel like I am living out who I am supposed to be and what I am supposed to do with my life. I also was told I needed to get a MRI to rule out cancer. Mother flippin’ cancer. I have been diagnosed with cancer twice, thyroid cancer. Now, thyroid cancer is treatable; it’s not going to kill me but it does disrupt my life. It’s a severe nuisance and it alters my plans. And as you can tell I LOVE my plans! Dang it now!

“I realize what we all are. And if only everybody could realize this! But it cannot be explained. There is no way of telling people that they are all walking around shining like the sun!” ~ Thomas Merton

It’s so unfathomably easy to lose yourself. Every day is a fight to remain conscious. Maybe this is in part what Jesus was referring to when he said the path to life is narrow and only a few ever find it. Staying awake to your life really is the hardest thing of all.

I find myself surrounded by dreams, fantasies created from masks I like to wear. Yes, some part of me likes to wear them, and that’s a big part of the problem. I find myself not merely tricked into falling asleep, but enticed.

Here’s something I hear quite often in my coaching sessions:“I’m just waiting on God to reveal His will to me. I’m willing to do whatever He wants; I just need Him to show me. I don’t understand why He’s waiting so long to tell me what He wants me to do. Maybe I’m just not listening hard enough? Or maybe there’s some lesson for me in His silence? Why isn’t God telling me what He wants?”

Now, let me say up front this kind of situation has some nuance to it. It’s certainly commendable that you want to know God’s will. It’s even more commendable that you are willing to surrender yourself to His direction ~ what Ruth Haley Barton calls the “Prayer of Indifference”. So I’m not saying either of those dispositions of the heart are wrong or undesirable. Far from it! They are awesome.

But for many who pray this sort of “just tell me what to do” prayer, there is something false about it. Something escapist. Something that pretends holiness, but in truth just wants to avoid the responsibility of making a decision. It’s like the young man of 25 years who begs his parents to tell him what career he should choose. He’s not a child anymore. Such a decision is no longer his parents’ to make. Yet he wonders in exasperation why they won’t reveal to him their will for his life.

Somehow we’ve lost touch with this basic truth: the life of faith is inherently developmental. We grow and mature over time ~ at least we’re supposed to ~ and as we do, our relationship with God must grow and mature too. This is God’s will for everyone. His nature is developmental. He is always about the business of growing us up.

“Love is the only aspiration big enough for the immensity of human community and challenge in the 21st Century.” ~ Krista Tippett

When I look at the way we do politics in the U.S., and in particular the way my fellow Christians and I engage with it, I can’t help but wonder what Jesus thinks about it all. I wonder how each of our words and actions in the political arena affect him. If he were given the stage at one of our televised debates, I wonder what he would say to his followers about this current election, about the candidates, and about the way we’re all handling it.

That is, if he’d say anything at all. I mean, Jesus’ life in the flesh happened under the tyranny of Roman rule. Israel was an occupied nation, and it would be ludicrous to think that Jesus didn’t witness blatant acts of injustice against his countrymen on a regular basis. He most certainly experienced oppression himself. It was the Roman overlords, after all, who ultimately killed him.

Despite all this, in the years of his public life, Jesus seemed to go out of his way to avoid talking about his Roman oppressors. His message was stubbornly non-political. In some ways, this must have seemed ridiculous to a lot of people living back then, or at the very least naïve. How could you speak out in favor of the Kingdom of God, and not speak out against the Kingdom of Rome? Yet when people spoke of their disdain for Roman oppression, Jesus spoke of loving your enemies (Matthew 5:38-48). When the religious leaders of the day tried to make Jesus take sides in the political debate, he rebuked them and refused to be pinned down (Matthew 22:15-22).

Maybe he thought getting into politics would only cloud and confuse his primary mission. Or maybe he saw that the message of hope he had come to share was for the Romans too.

“Life grants us a series of opportunities, and those opportunities come with a price.” ~ Ian Ruhter

So here’s the first thing to finding your purpose: You have to discover what you love. This can take a long time, or can happen in a single day. But you have to put your heart out there and let something take it. You have to experience things. You have to let yourself be vulnerable to life. What will break your heart? What will set it on fire? What will make it soar? To know these things, you have to let life happen to you. As you do, ask yourself, always be asking yourself, “What do I love? What do I want to give my love to? What do I want to give my life for?”

“What do I love? What do I want to give my love to? What do I want to give my life for?”

Once you know the answer to this, the next thing is to give yourself over to it. There is a threshold, a point of no return for every passion. Until you go all in, you are just dabbling. There’s nothing wrong with dabbling. Just be clear with yourself about the fact you’re doing it. Ask yourself: “If this really is something I truly love, what am I willing to sacrifice for it?”